May 25, 2015Well this week was super full of meetings and driving! Because of that there was much less time spent out talking to people, and when we were we had very little success. When we go knocking it’s interesting how many people say it’s wonderful what we’re doing, or great to see young people so dedicated to their faith, but will not let us share a message. There’s also a lot of people who tell us to be careful but won’t listen. This week I also realized that I haven’t told you about the ice cream trucks here. They are super excessively everywhere all the time! Apparently they start when the snow is cleared and go all year until there’s too much snow again. They are out and going all day, early morning to late night. The songs get annoying, and then just plain creepy at night. I haven’t tried any yet because Sister Layton is pretty sure she’s lactose intolerant and doesn’t eat sweets.On Thursday we had a trainer-trainee meeting with the other new missionaries at the mission office. President and his assistants gave good messages and workshops on studies, we had pizza, and then we heard from the senior couple missionaries about the things they are in charge of (mail, cars, housing, health, records, etc). Apparently the mail in the city areas is very unreliable, it depends on the mail mans mood as to whether it will be forwarded or sent back or never delivered. On the island is fine, but there may be some addresses later in my mission that I don’t give you because it’ll be more reliable to just the mission office. That night we went over to Miranda’s with Jessica to help her start her family history. The four of us also had lunch together after church yesterday in Jessica’s apartment.On Saturday we went to the temple! Lindsey from our ward went back to the temple to do baptisms for the first time in 7 years and invited us to come with her. She is going back to do an endowment session for the first time again next week at the same time that we’re taking Miranda for the first time. We also helped an older lady in our ward who is half blind go back for the first time for a few years. We started weeding her garden during the middle of the week too.We are at the Mets game today! There’s a lot of missionaries here from all over the mission.

Well there went 2 months! It seems like I just barely started, but at the same time so much has happened. Also, this week is weird sorry!Zone conference was awesome today, the spirit was strong and we learned a lot. It was nice to have a last personal contact with President and Sister Calderwood as they prepare to leave at the first of July. I say today because I’m writing this Monday night haha we have to leave early tomorrow to make it to Sister Layton’s doctor appointments in Manhatten and then will be there pretty much until prime time :/ don’t know if we’ll have time for laundry or groceries!Oh well haha it will be fun and exciting I am planning to write a bigger email as I wait during her appointments, but I’m not sure how everything will pan out.Big things of this week:I went on an exchange with Sister Vandertoolen, one of the Sister Training Leaders. I went to her area which is a YSA branch! It was fun and awesome to work with her.The baptismal font almost overflowed! Haha I had to hike up my dress and stand in there holding the drain up while we waited for the elders to figure out how to turn it off.Miranda got baptized! She overslept and we were freaking for an hour and a half and went to get her right after sacrament. Thank you for your emails!We met a cute nice lady on the subway today! It was a more empty car and she was in the corner with her baby so we went by her to try to strike up a conversation. After finding out her girl’s name and how old she is we found out she’s from Utah and is a member hahah! She then decided that it’d be really cute to take a picture and send it to our parents. She’s really nice and was meeting up with her husband who’s out here for work.Sister Layton had an appointment today at 11:30 and 2:30 so we had two and a half hours in between to enjoy our pday. We walked through Central Park and then headed to Times Square. We went to m&m world, I took a picture where Kristin and I did years ago. We took pictures in a photo booth there picture in Times Square, saw where we stayed on our trip out here, went to sbarro for lunch. We went to the Disney store, where there was a giant stuffed Sven and they had the escalators decorated like Tangled. We also went to the giant Toys R Us where they had minions!!! Including a big statue and little plush ones (which I bought one of they also had a giant T. rex that moved around and made noise. It reminded me both of Evan, it was for a Jurrasic Park area, and Lesley because they have the dinosaurs back at the zoo. It was fun and also really weird to be there as a missionary.

Wednesday, May 13, 2015

It was ssooo good to see and hear from you yesterday! I loved it :) :) I was so happy to see all of you together and hear your voices, now it'll have to hold me through till December. To answer your first question from skyping, I'd say the highlight so far of my mission has been teaching Miranda (who's getting baptized on Sunday!!), when people actually let us share a brief message on their doorstep, and running to different parts of the bay whether to a pier or canal or beach each morning.

I didn't know what to tell you about last week and I felt bad it was so short, so I made myself a list of things last night :) On Saturday we helped set up for a fundraiser walk for the cystic fibrosis foundation. They had people dressed up as Darth Vadar and a storm trooper come haha :) At the end they had ttttooonnnsss of bagels and muffins and apples leftover, and they gave them all to us! It's crazy! We're sharing them between all the missionaries at the loft (our apartment building's name) and we'll definitely end up throwing a bunch away too.

The past two weeks I've been reading from Our Search For Happiness for a small part of each personal study. It's by Elder Ballard and is a explanatory introduction to the church for nonmembers. It's really helpful for me seeing everything in a new light through his eyes and more ways to explain things better. I'm really enjoying it!

Some things about my area and probably Long Island in general. There are bunnies and squirrels everywhere!! I'll try to remember to take a picture next time, but I see them way more than any birds. It is very rare for there to be just one immediate family living in a house here. More likely for parts of an extended family to be together or each room of a house to be rented out. There are a few areas we've been in where the houses look more like Utah and it's just one family, but we don't have any investigators there, and it's really hard to catch them at home. Like people say there are a LOT of sketchy and very scary things that happen here and in the city. We hear about them happening to investigators and their families. Thankfully though, Heavenly Father protects us and we are never in the areas when things are happening and haven't seen anything too bad. They have a place called Blaze pizza here and I went there the 2nd time this week. It's pretty cool, it's like a subway for pizza! You put on your toppings then they stick in like a stone-fire oven and cooks in 3 minutes.

So Miranda! She is the coolest sweetest girl. She definitely doesn't fit in with New York. Along with that she's pretty quiet and shy unless you talk directly to her and ask questions so the youth have been awkward to her, which is sad. She has such a strong testimony and is so ready and excited to be a member of the church and "get baptism" as she would say :) shes trying to transfer to a school in Texas and is going there this summer, so she probably won't stick around in the ward..but she will definitely stick around in the church wherever she's at. She takes the train to church here and already asked for our help to find the church in Texas. I'm so excited for :) depending when she goes to Texas we may be able to take her to the temple too, she definitely wants to go soon!

We also are working with Mary, who is a miracle! She had been "dropped" and never given the Book of Mormon she ordered because she was sick for awhile. But she really wants to learn and give it a chance, and boy is she doing that! She grew up Catholic but wasn't super fond of the way they ran things and made her feel. We gave her the Restoration pamphlet and her Book of Mormon, when we came back the next week she had read the pamphlet and through 1 Nephi 13. That never happens here!! She understood and believed all of the pamphlet was either true or made sense and could be true. She felt peace and like she was really learning for herself in a new way as she read the Book of Mormon. She is truly searching for the truth in her life! She really wants to come see what our church services are like, but has had a hard time so far because of her work schedule. That will be a problem for her, but I'm excited to see where this will go with her.

The other person I wanted to tell you more about this week is Jessica! She lives directly beneath us and was baptized 7 months ago. She is our go to girl and a friend to all the missionaries. She goes out teaching and knocking with us all the time. She is our source to the full internet when we have a question and need help. (For example: train schedule, how to tell if a fruit is ripe, latest world news-Nepal earthquake) She buys us food and is the closest we get to having dinner appointments. She makes us laugh and helps us not drive each other too crazy. Jessica is awesome!! I felt like with how great she is and close we are that you needed to know more about her :)

Also a little bit about my companion Sister Layton. She is from centerville and went to SUU for a year. She laughs all the time, about everything. She works very hard and keeps us very busy. She starting going deaf when she was 5 and got a cochlear implant when she was 11. She can't hear you unless you're close by and still has a hard time understanding what people say sometimes. Music doesn't sound good to her because it all gets jumbled together, but let's me play my iPod in the car all day as we drive because she knows it helps me. She gets full super fast and so doesn't get it when I go for more food or don't have leftovers. She's really nice and tries her best but we're both working on patience with each other.

I love each of you so so much!! Thank you for your love and support <3

Avèk lanmou, Sè Hardman

Guess what I'm doin right now?! Pday activity as a district....juicing apples we got on Saturday!

Well this week was transfers so it's down to just Sister Layton and I! It's kinda weird and I miss Sister Ewell's funny remarks all the time. She got transferred out to the Hamptons (far rich end of Long Island) and we're sure she's doing great. Transfer meeting was really cool. There were 3 or 4 musical numbers from missionaries throughout the mission and one by the leaving missionaries. We sang called to serve in English and Spanish and said our purpose in every language in the mission. Then Sister and President Calderwood addressed us. Sister Calderwood talked about how short our time is here and how important planning every minute of time is so we can be efficient and good disciples and missionaries of Christ. President Calderwood talked about 3 principles for life. 1. Learn to rely on God. Say "Thy Will Be Done" and MEAN it. Don't try to counsel him as to how your life should go, but take counsel from him for how to follow his perfect plan for you. 2. The little things matter. If you take care of all the little things the big things will fall into place. 3. Don't underestimate the importance of your attitude. Either way it will be a self fulfilling prophecy. Then we heard aaallll the transfers for all over the mission. It was cool! This transfer we're trying to focus on not wasting time with people who aren't progressing, so we can spend the needed time to find those that have been prepared and will listen and then work with them. 3 of the days this week were filled with cancelled appointments, tracting, and look ups to no avail. The other two were mostly that as well, bbbuuutttt with a miracle or two thrown in of super cool new investigators! There were two lessons this week that went like I imagined they might before I came out, it was awesome :) just hoping and praying now that they will continue to desire to understand, and that they will keep commitments. It's really hard to get people to church here because many of them don't have cars. And the members that live around them are less active. And I don't even know the members that are active. We don't ever have dinner appointments or really anything with the members besides church and then were with our investigators that came. Please be helpful to the missionaries! Be a member they could call up to come to a lesson or get someone to church, it may not be as much of a problem at home but still try. Saturday morning we did service out on Fire Island. It was supposed to be a beach clean up, but here wasn't much to clean up so Sister Layton and I helped repaint lifeguard chair/stands. Haha I got a big splotch of white paint on my jeans...guess I'll remember that the rest of my mission! It's finally getting warm here :) now the flowers and trees are blooming! They weren't when I got here, it was pretty sad driving down the highways with just brown on either side.
Also at transfers, Hermana Zambito from the MTC and that I was talking to through Facebook before is in the Brentwood district! So she lives just below us here in the Loft with her comp who is new to the area too. It's pretty fun having them around!
Sunday is Mother's Day!!!! I get to see and talk to you!! :D
I love you all soo much and hope you're doing well! Avèk lanmou, Sè Amanda Hardman